jonathanf2

Kicking myself when Amazon was doing a fire sale on like new inventory on GP 5000 clinchers. I picked up a pair for $55 and they had several listed. I should have bought all of them!

Unfortunately a wood screw went through my rear GP 5000 tire sidewall and I ended up replacing the set with a pair of new Schwalbe One tires. While decent, they're not GP 5000s!

Trakhak

Another factor rarely alluded to: reading forums like this one, you can lose sight of just how few bike riders around the world buy pro-level equipment, including tires. Continental's bike tire division has to be small compared to their auto tire division, and their highest-performance tires must represent a fairly small proportion of their bike tire sales. So their per-unit cost of manufacture for those tires, taking into consideration all of their overhead, could be pretty high.

genejockey 

So, the MSRPs are all the same but the Contis are less heavily discounted? Could that be because they sell better and don't really NEED to be discounted? They're really good tires! I just tried a set of Vittoria Corsa G2.0s on a bike I've been running GP5Ks on for 4 years, and while they're as comfortable, they're noticeably slower. Apparently the new Corsa Pros are comparable to or better than the GP5Ks, but they're still new and they don't have the same great reputation yet.

OTOH, the cost of the Contis will drive more riders to try other tire brands, so that may change.

Sy Reene

Possible. The 2-pack of the Challenge Strada TLRs for $78 I would try if I was actually in the TL tire-buying market right now.

Eric F 

I was a happy user of GP5KTLs. I really liked everything about them...until I got my second sidewall slash. Granted, I might have had the same damage with any other tire, but I still felt compelled to try something else. I'm currently on Corsa Pros, and have zero complaints. They ride very nice and seem equally fast. I also got the CPs for a much better price than the Contis.

PeteHski

Yep, relatively small volume production and competition requiring a fair amount of R&D to stay on top of the game. Especially these days when critical performance data is so readily available. The cheaper tyres get churned out in much higher volume and require very little development. Nobody buying commuter tyres looks critically at rolling resistance or weight. They are mainly driven by cost and durability.

I would imagine Continental have a small R&D team working on bike tyres and they probably spend most of their effort on the top tier products where performance is important to the consumer. Some of that work will trickle down into cheaper tyres and some will be irrelevant.

The same goes for car tyres. It’s the cutting edge products which require the most R&D. When Michelin were competing head to head with Bridgestone in F1 in the mid 2000s they were both spending obscene amounts of money on tyre development. Literally hundreds of compounds and constructions were tested with whole batches of tyres in each combination, mostly ending in scrap. We used to routinely carry 100 sets of wheels in testing at one point.

roadcrankr

You're correct, PeteHski. Companies amortize their R&D over several years of tire sales.
So, if Conti incurs, say, $10 million to develop their GP5k, they include that as part of their production costs.
This likely results in upping their selling price, which only gets compounded by the high demand for their top tier tire.
Personally, I view bicycle tires like a commodity, choosing among several manufacturers' best offerings.
Splitting hairs in my book. Not enough difference between Vittoria, Michelin, Schwalbe, Continental, et al to make a difference.

unterhausen

I keep hoping prices will come back down a little, but so far I have been disappointed. It's not like they are that more expensive than they were before, unless you're buying fatbike tires
At least most tires I want are available now.

PeteHski

Usually at least one of them is on sale. Right now Contis are on sale here so I just bought a couple of the new GP5000AS TR to try. In stock too, which has been a problem in recent years.

Duragrouch

First, I don't think any company spends anywhere close to $10 million on a new road race bike tire, unless it's the very first tire they have ever made.

Car tires are changing in size much more often than in the past, plus tread designs are constantly changing (the exception was in the 1970s, GM established their Tire Performance Criteria or TPC, and suddenly every brand's tread design for GM looked the same), requiring all new mold tooling. Car tire molds are much more advanced. The materials are more advanced due to performance and durability under heat (both ambient and self-generated), as well as under extreme cold, it's nearly universal these days that all car parts are tested down to -40C/F (same temp in C or F).

Now let's look at road race bike tires: I haven't bought any in decades, but last I did, they had no tread, they were all smooth. 700c x 23 is going to be the same size bead diameter and section height now as 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago, and that means the molds should be the same over many years, except for lettering, and from what I see, these days it is a printed label and not molded letters, and the mold is the biggest unique capital cost, unlike the machines that process the raw materials which stay the same. The difference is then in changes to rubber formulation, the carcas, and belt, and all of those materials have advanced development in high performance car tires before bike tires, and making prototype runs with those variables, but all in the same mold, which, as I said, is reused for a smooth road tire, means low prototype costs. Road race bike tires operate in a MUCH narrower temperature envelope than car tires. So the development costs are vastly less than for car tires. Marketing probably costs more. Thus, the reason road-race bike tire makers chase this market is because it is high margin, they make more profit on them than car tires, when they can get the well-heeled to pay premium prices. And if you think there is no possibility of collusion or unstated gentleman's agreements on pricing between makers, you haven't been paying attention to myriad other products and industries where that has occured.

Used to be, you'd see some quality products being made unchanged for years, even decades. But product makers figured out there is less profit in that, than frequent change and convincing consumers that the newer product is better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, it's just different. At the pinacle of sports, what competitor wants to have doubts that their setup isn't the best available?

Now let's contrast this with small sailboats, "sailing dinghies"; Many models of these have fleets used by many schools and universities, and individual racers, that want to know that when they invest in a boat, it won't be useless in a couple of years. So the race sanctioning bodies establish "one-design" criteria, and the boats stay the same, year after year, decade after decade. You get advances when a whole new model is introduced, and folks can chose whether to start racing in that class, or just stay with the old class at low cost.

There used to be good reasons for expensive road race bikes, like hand-built steel frames, and craft involved in making the components. Now they have molded frames, and CNC machining, which lowers the cost, and the groupos (component sets) alone cost thousands of dollars. I have zero interest. I'll take the production sports car version of bike parts; sporty, but good value for the cost. Same for bike tires.

Rant over.

Maelochs

While it makes for an elegant argument, none of this is based in reality. A simple look at actual tires and simple comparison between brands and eras show that even within a single corporation, tires change frequently and compounds also ... meaning different production and curing demands (E.g. I don't recall a lot of graphene in tires a while back.)
. Actually high-performance car tires are also priced as luxury items. Check out prices on Pirelli p-Zeros or whatever.
Please list ten products which have not changed in decades. Even laundry detergents come in "New Improved" versions every couple of years (even if nothing changes but the dyes or scents.)

Your premise is that manufacturers spend more to bring out new products to make the public feel secure? I call cowflop. With, say, laundry detergent, the "new" label is just an advertising hook. With performance-related updates, the need is to keep up with the competition. There is less profit if new models need to be developed, but No profit if the competition has a product which outperforms yours. Whether people realize it or not, rubber compounds have advanced steadily to be tougher and more durable, or stickier and more durable, and every time a competitor offers a product that measurably performs better, the industry standard changes. it is not he perception of performance, but actual performance which drives the top end of the market.

Yes, and there are spec auto racing classes too, for the same reason---removing development costs from the team budget to allow more people to compete. This is generally done with lower-tier series, where advertising and other sponsorship dollars are hard to come by. Specified designs (universal and unchanging rules) keep costs lower to remove the barrier to participation.

On another hand, the entire design demands for top-tier sailing boats (e.g. America's Cup) (or cars, in many cases, e.g. F1) sometimes change radically and frequently. In sports car racing, the top-end cars usually don't last more than five years before engine, chassis, and aero specs change completely (and often the old cars are not grandfathered in.)

Not sure what this has to do with the price of bike tires, but there it is.

You take what you want .... but please understand that you leave readers with the impression that you have not read or understood the thread.

Pretty much everything is priced by the idea of "Charge what the market will bear." The only place production costs enter into pricing (besides basic accounting) is in extremely low-margin, highly competitive products. So long as design, development and construction costs are covered, price ignores those factors. Price is based on what the buyer will pay or what the manufacturer believes the buyer will pay.

People who fail to grasp this fact ....

Duragrouch

I take your points.

Regarding goods that have been made unchanged:

Filson waxed cotton jackets (their traditional designs)
Mauviel copper cookware
LeCreuset enameled cast iron cookware
Lodge cast iron cookware
French (de Buyer and Matfer Bourgeat et al) carbon steel skillets
Winchester Model 70
Mauser Model 98
Ithaca Model 37
M1911 pistol (companies now have simply added as standard, what used to be offered improvements by custom gunsmiths, otherwise unchanged)
Kennedy toolboxes
LL Bean duck boots and heavy canvas tote bags
Red Wing 866 wellington and other boots
Klein tools
Channellocks
Zippo (petrol) lighters
Quality foods, from emmental cheese to prosciutto di parma to parmisiano reggiano and thousands of others, unchanged for hundreds of years and longer
Martin guitars
Steel and wood body resonator guitars, such as a Dobro
Steinway pianos
Bamboo fly rods and quality reels
Double-edge safety razors and badger hair brushes (both now back in fashion)
Quality alcoholic spirits, thousands of them, unchanged product and process for over 100 years
E6B flight computer
Freeland's spotting scope stands
Opinel folding knives
Louisville Slugger bats
Brooks Team Professional leather saddle
Ventile cotton fabric
Gransfors Bruk axes

These are products that endure, unchanged, because they are already evolved to a perfect state.

Trakhak

Very interesting list. I was curious, so, picking a few items at random:

Searched for "How have Steinway pianos changed over time?" Answer: 'The Steinway "B" has evolved over a period of 149 years with a redesign occurring on average every 15 years--a total of 10 Model B "evolutionary eras.” '

Same search, Le Creuset: 'The "Signature" series, introduced in 2010, includes improved phenolic lid knobs good to 480°F/248°C, larger, more ergonomic loop pot handles, and sand-colored interiors with improved durability and stain resistance. Earlier, "classic" phenolic knobs were only oven safe to 375°F/190°C.'

Bizarrely, just yesterday I was rereading an old (2009) issue of Premier Guitar with a pictorial spread where four builders of resonator guitars showed and discussed examples of their products. All said that they were always thinking up subtle ways to improve their guitars. One had, just the previous year, introduced a model with three interchangeable pan configurations.

Richie Sachs, too, has said that he's still figuring out little changes in his framebuilding techniques to make his frames better, or his methods better, or both.

Not a gotcha - I assume, for example, that the non-"Signature" Le Creuset pieces have indeed remained unchanged for decades. And that you're right about all or most of your other examples. And Sachs frames, regardless of his tweaks, are undoubtedly still functionally virtually identical to the frames he was producing when he first set up his show in Connecticut after apprenticing in England in the early '70's..

And some things change for the worse. I learned recently, thanks to someone pointing it out on Bike Forums, that inner-tube manufacturers have switched from the previous butyl recipe to a new one that is probably cheaper and/or easier to produce - with one result being that Rema patches and glue aren't working as well as they used to.

Maelochs

I admit that of the millions of products on the market, some might not have changed (or improved) much .... costs have still risen.

kani

I have used BikeInn many times and they have always delivered. The shipping times are quite long, however and the website is a bit flaky. Many of the item descriptions are auto translated, so there are lots of weird directly translated sentences which doesn’t exactly make the website seem legit. Also, sometimes your shopping cart just randomly gets emptied😂 Super annoying, but for the price and product selection I won’t complain.

georges1

Bike 24 is where I ordered the conti tires for my MTBs and my roadies, this price seems very reasonable to me regarding the quality of the tire.

smd4

Alas, even the venerable Louisville Slugger has changed hundreds of times, from different shapes and weights, modern improvements like cupping, to different wood species. There may even come a time when traditional white ash might not even be available due to pests killing the trees.

rekmeyata

So much for living in a supposedly free trade society, Conti, Specialized, and other companies have price fixing here in America, but not other countries.

rekmeyata

There are some old school stuff that just can't be beaten by modern stuff.

I bought a Orvis Foliage wax cotton jacket after untold numbers of nylon type of jackets all failed in a relative short period of time, and it's a very nice jacket. Wax jackets do have a slight odor to them, but it's a manly odor, not something weird. They also age with a patina after a while. I decided to go old school on a lighter jacket after my old school Wool coat which is now about 40 years old still looks brand new, again my regular winter coats made of nylon never came close to lasting a long time.

Flip side to that though is that neither my wife nor I like cast iron cookware, we bought a Lodge frying pan some years ago, used it quite a bit, had a friend who loves cast iron taught us how to season it, how to clean it, what foods to cook in it, and what foods not to cook in it, and after about a couple of years we got rid of it, just absolutely hated it.

I have a couple of bamboo fly rods, but then I bought a carbon fiber fly rod, quite frankly I like the CF fly rod better. The CF rod has more sensitivity to it. I use both types all the time, but I just like the CF one better.

I bought a pair of Red Wing shoes some years ago, the place I bought them from said I could return them in 30 days if I didn't like them. Wore them and hated them, they hurt my feet, so I returned them a week after I got them, and he said I couldn't return them because I wore them? I went around around with that guy, did no good.

I have had quartz watches, even the Casio G Shock watch, and they ALL failed after about 3 to 5 years, meanwhile my automatic watches keep ticking year after year. I'll never buy another quartz watch. Not sure why quartz watches don't last long with me, but they just stop, thinking the battery is dead, go in and replace it and it will run, but by the time the 2nd or 3rd battery dies, they won't restart with a new battery.

Old school bicycle components for the most part were built to last forever, not todays crap. I have over 150,000 miles on Suntour Superbe components on one of my bikes and they've never broke, meanwhile my 105 rear hub one of the pawls has fried after about 12,000 miles, so I will probably get a DT Swiss rear hub since they don't use pawls and modern manufactures can't make pawls last a long time like they use to.

PeteHski

I have several mechanical and quartz watches. My oldest quartz is a 1999 Omega Speedmaster Pro X-33 and that is still working perfectly - obviously needs battery replacements every few years. I also have a solar powered G-shock that is around 15 years old and still going strong. My mechanical watches have been reliable too, but they are pretty crap at actually keeping accurate time!

My dad bought a Seiko quartz watch sometime in the early 80s. It was still going strong in 1999 when he died. The cheap quartz watches I had in the 80s all died within a few years like yours.

georges1

Interesting what you are saying,all my Breitling Chronomat B01 mechanical chronographs are in the +1/+3sec per day range, same with my 1973-1975 Zenith El Primeros and with my Seiko 8R28, 8R39 and 8R48 chronographs and my Rolex Turnograph from 1971 . The quality of the watch servicing/overhaul in a mechanical watch is what makes it accurate over à 5/10 years period.I have one Seiko sub branded diver that I use when mountain biking the battery died after 5 years.I alwayshave my mechanical watches serviced every 5-10 years.

mstateglfr 

1- not being able to buy something from aretsiler in another country is not commentary on if Americans live in a free trade society or not.
2- we do not live in a free trade society. Trade has been, is, and will continue to be heavily regulated. It is regulated by laws and regulated by corporations themselves.
3- a company choosing to place trade/sale restrictions on its own products is different from a government not allowing the import or export of certain goods.
4- good lord.

Maelochs

How i feel when private citizens complain that other private citizens are "violating my First Amendment privilege to Free Speech."

No law says anyone has to have a clue, but no law says people can't .....

PeteHski

So all your watches greatly exceed COSC certified chronometer accuracy of -4/+6 sec daily average. I only have 1 watch that meets that standard and the others are a mixed bag, although good enough for casual use. For perspective, the equivalent COSC chronometer standard is +/- 0.07 sec daily average, although none of my quartz watches are certified. But my G-shock does pick up the atomic clock radio beacon, so is always spot on.

georges1

G shock are very good watches, I had one when I was a teenager, it lasted me 8 years